Climate change adaptation strategies among smallholder livestock farmers in Namibia's Omaheke Region, Namibia
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Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Discover Sustainability
Abstract
The challenges of climate change are continuously increasing, constituting a major threat to livestock production, which
is more than a socio-economic cornerstone in Namibian rural communal farmers, contributing approximately two-thirds
of the country’s agricultural GDP. Climate variability, which may be in the form of drought, very high temperatures, floods
and frosts has been reported to have detrimental effects on feed and water availability, leading to reduced livestock
weight, growth, production and reproductive performance, and ultimately high mortality. Understanding smallholder
farmers’ socio-psychological antecedents such as knowledge, attitudes and perceptions and the way they influence their
level of adaptation to CC mitigation strategies needs to be assessed, as it guides CC policy formulation and intervention
programmes. The study investigated CC perception and adaptation strategies for livestock farmers in Omaheke Region.
Data were gathered from (n=80) purposively sampled farmers in Epukiro and Otjombinde constituencies based on
livestock ownership. The study revealed that 93.8% of the respondents were aware that the climate is changing, with
attributes such as very high and very low temperatures, high and low rainfall, and drought having been noticed. Climate
change has been attributed to both human and natural activity. The study observed that the implementation of CC
adaptation strategies in livestock agriculture is low, thus recommends that the improvement of adaptation techniques
involving employing extension services, promotion of farmer-to-farmer extension, and utilization of various information
sources of climate knowledge, such as farmers’ associations and social organizations, should be the future policy priority
Description
The objective of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitudes,
and perceptions of livestock farmers to CC and the way they influence their level of mitigation and adaptation strategies
Keywords
Agriculture, Climate variability, Farmers’ perception, Livestock production, Resilience, Rural development, Smallholder farmers, Namibia, University of Namibia